We have, I think, sufficient testimony to Ben’s inability to refrain from gibes at Shakspere’s want of scholarship. Rowe, who had traditions of Davenant’s, tells how, in conversation with Suckling, Davenant, Endymion Porter, and Hales of Eton, Ben harped on Will’s want of learning; and how Hales snubbed him. Indeed, Ben could have made mirth enough out of _The Winter’s Tale_. For, granting to Mr. Greenwood {45a} that “the mention of Delphos suggests the Bohemia of a much earlier date, and under the reign of Ottocar (1255–78) Bohemia extended from the Adriatic to the shores of the Baltic,” that only makes matters far worse. “Delphos” never was a place-name; there was no oracle on the isle of “Delphos”; there were no Oracles in 1255–78 (A.D.); and Perdita, who could have sat for her portrait to Giulio Romano, was contemporary with an Oracle at _Delphos_, but not with Ottocar. There never was so mad a mixture, not even in _Ivanhoe_; not even in _Kenilworth_. Scott erred deliberately, as he says in his prefaces; but Will took the insular oracle of Delphos from Greene, inserted Giulio Romano “for his personal diversion,” never heard of Ottocar (no more than I), and made a delightful congeries of errors in gaiety of heart. Nobody shall convince me that Francis Bacon was so charmingly irresponsible; but I cannot speak so confidently of Mr. Greenwood’s Great Unknown, a severe scholar, but perhaps a frisky soul. There was no region called Bohemia when the Delphic oracle was in vigour;—this apology (apparently contrived by Sir Edward Sullivan) is the most comic of erudite reflections. Some cruel critic has censured the lovely speech of Perdita, concerning the flowers which Proserpine let fall, when she was carried off by Dis. How could she, brought up in the hut of a Bohemian shepherd, know anything of the Rape of Proserpine? Why not, as she lived in the days of the Delphic Oracle—and Giulio Romano, and of printed ballads. It is impossible, Baconians cry, that the rabbit-stealer, brought up among the Audreys and Jaquenettas of Warwickshire, should have created the noble and witty ladies of the Court; and known the style of his Armado; and understood how dukes and kings talk among themselves—usually in blank verse, it appears.